


Clay

by Diminua



Series: Slices Through the Heart [3]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: M/M, Slow Burn, The Arrangement (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-09-28 19:54:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20431550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diminua/pseuds/Diminua
Summary: The city, in case anyone is wondering, is Avignon. Somewhere in the late 800s.





	1. Chapter 1

The first sun is slanting over the low building opposite as Crowley opens the shutters and leans himself against the thick sill of plaster and clay. The buildings are young – built new again out of the destruction just a century ago – but the streets are on the same familiar pattern. The square he is looking down on has always been a morning market, and traders are already arriving.

Aziraphale is where he has been since the early hours, seated at a table, arms deep in the scrolls and codices they’ve rescued from over-zealous reformers. Their first joint venture, since Crowley can chalk it up as saving forbidden and occult knowledge, and the angel can make sure it’s kept out of the reach of human hands, so both their respective sides should be happy. Against the wall is the large chest which is one of the angel’s prized possessions, a board nailed in place to divide it in half - linen in one side and books in the other.

There is not much else in the room, the stool the angel is sitting on, a small inkwell and a goose quill, a pottery lamp with a flame a human could not have read by, and one of the two silver beakers Aziraphale owns - the other is in the second small room, where Crowley took his own nightcap, but never finished it. 

Sleep is a given now. Crowley is settled in this human skin – so settled that it’s rare to be conscious of it. Only sometimes, when the body he’s wearing is female, and someone tries to suggest she’s out of place (that never lasts long. Crowley has no scruples about letting the mask slip enough to terrify and silence) or inappropriately dressed (that has happened in the male body too, and it’s astonishing to Crowley that anyone thinks their lusts are his problem, just because humans like to deny and beat themselves).

Mostly though, he enjoys it without being aware. In a bath perhaps, warm water clouded and scented with oil, or close to some foolish human creature whose desire is stronger than their fear or their prejudice, slippery with sweat as they warm and cling and pant against him. Greedily snatching at pleasure before it slips away, knowing how fleeting it all is, how short their lives.

For now though pleasure is in the early morning summer sun slanting through a wide unshuttered window. Crowley’s thoughts and questions suspended, as if in amber, or pickled in spirits. Like the sea creatures the fishermen pull in from the deep nets sometimes, things you never usually see, preserved. The sun and the rustle of parchment, the succinct sounds of a quill scratching across the page as Aziraphale makes neat, workmanlike notes.

The wind howls through here in the winter months, weeps around the buildings, not harsh but endless, relentless, constant. Like a grieving mother. Like god, they say, weeping for the sins of man (Crowley thinks little of this. Bad enough to have to listen to the wind sob for weeks on end without being told it’s your fault. Anyway, from what Crowley remembers, there were no tears. Endless smiling, as if the Almighty knew something you didn’t – which he supposed was fair enough - and a steady refusal to answer questions, which he didn’t.)

Eventually Aziraphale realises that morning has come, and puts out the lamp. A pucker of lips, a quiet exhale. Nothing harsh, nothing forceful in him. All his movements are tidy and just enough. He glances up at Crowley, who has clambered into the window, back against the folded shutter, legs tucked up on the sill. The sound of the market filters in, small children shouting, bartering, men calling the price of fish and figs.

‘Did you sleep well?’ He asks.

‘Hmm. You should try it.’

‘Perhaps.’ He is sure he never will. Had glanced in at Crowley, pulling back the curtain to the smaller room to see him curled on his side, lips parted, cheek pressed into the sacking-and-straw mattress, and the thought of how vulnerable the demon was, oblivious to everything, had both horrified and fascinated him.

I can’t protect you, he had thought, and then been confused and unable to understand why he should want to protect Crowley. He is, after all, still the enemy.

But an enemy he wants to shelter. Had done, even from the beginning. An enemy he had felt ashamed of gazing upon while soft and exposed in sleep, his tunic ridden up above his knees and loose at the neck, betraying the maleness of this current form.

Aziraphale had turned away, distracted himself again with books and ink and scholarship, horribly conscious of a sudden craving he tells himself is nothing, nothing at all.

Thoughts are just that. Thoughts. Harmless inside his own head as long as he doesn’t pursue them. So he writes and reads and catalogues until morning, until past time Crowley gets up, and then he begins putting scrolls away in the chest, fussing slightly, distracting himself again, claiming that it is time, surely, for a walk.

This will remain a habit for life. A walk before breakfast. Even when he has the shop, even during the blitz, exchanging a word or even bringing a fresh thermos of tea to the ARP post on the corner[1]. Even during the smallpox epidemics, after Gabriel forbids him to save any more lives, but permits him to at least render the sick more comfortable[2].

Here on this day in what is not yet the south of France, by this river which will be spanned, and will break the bridge, and be bridged again, he knows none of this. Crowley swings his legs back into the room and drops to his feet, rolls up and binds his hair, Aziraphale sponges ink from the inside of his fingers where his pen rests, straightens his collar and cuffs.

They take their walk along the riverbank, carrying bread and honey and fresh milk in a stone bottle stopped with wax. Crowley amuses himself by interfering with the current, making the fishermen wrestle with their oars as their boats slowly spin in the unexpected eddies.

‘Gone quite well, don’t you think?’ Crowley takes a mouthful of bread, a drop of honeyed sweetness, and lets the angel have the rest. He declines the milk. There is something too innocent about new milk. Something unspotted. And Crowley is not a calf.

‘Very well indeed.’

‘Where are you off to next?’

‘I’m not sure I’m going anywhere just yet. Still awaiting instructions. I think Gabriel finds all these schisms rather confusing. He seems to think it’s easier for me down here on the ground. Are you..’ he tails off.

‘Kabul. No idea why.’ He sends another boat spinning, and this time the young sailor loses control and ends up hitting the bank, the island in the centre of the river, falling on his bottom with a curse.

Aziraphale sighs but doesn’t comment. The boy is unharmed, after all, and tomorrow Crowley will be gone. He stands up, the last of the food eaten, and dusts himself free of crumbs so that they can continue their walk, the way the river runs, on its way to the sea.

[1] Somehow he also acquires a small metal framed bed with grey blankets, a fire extinguisher, and a reputation for being up at any time of the day or night, to offer help and sustenance until the ambulance comes. And if the injured they bring to Fell’s seem to recover more quickly or be less injured than first thought no-one says anything of it.

[2] Because it is ‘frivolous’ apparently, to save lives when you should be saving souls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The city, in case anyone is wondering, is Avignon. Somewhere in the late 800s.


	2. Chapter 2

Aziraphale arrives back in England about the time they start putting proper chimneys and staircases in the buildings.

He’s quite cosy by the time Crowley turns up. In fact he’s just rescued a ladybird that crawled out of a burning log, and is putting her carefully up into the thatch where the ceiling slopes down.

‘There.’ he coaxes. ‘A nice quiet spot to hibernate.’

The landlady’s daughter, who has escorted Crowley upstairs with two mugs of what her mother calls posset – sweet wine and old apples and nutmeg – is smiling fondly as she sets the drinks down by the fire and curtsies (just a bob really, an informal little thing) in answer to Aziraphale’s thanks.

Crowley grins too, making himself comfortable on a footstool by the fire, the faint smell of woodsmoke and ink and spice and apple curling around him as Aziraphale heats the poker in the fire and then drowns it in each cup in turn to warm the drink. It’s efficient, contained, the way Crowley remembers him holding the sword, his wrists surprisingly strong.

His fingers just brush Crowley’s very slightly, deftly avoidant, as he hands the demon his drink handle-first.

The girl has gone, but Crowley wonders if she’d noticed that there was no embrace, no shake of hands, and thought it odd. Or if she had surprised the look of unqualified pleasure on Aziraphale’s face before he schooled it into something appropriately disapproving.

Or is it only Crowley who notices Aziraphale’s hands and manner, the clashes of solidity and softness, kindliness and judgement? She’d been helping her mother when Crowley came in, flour-dusted hands wiped hastily on a rag while the drinks were ladled out, and a piece of dough torn off the corner for the smaller children to make shapes with. She has a father at sea, and brothers, too, to think on. To her, the lodger and his odd friend are footnotes.

Aziraphale’s clearly landed on his feet in this place though. One glance around the room makes that clear. The arrangement has allowed for a little less travelling, but Crowley has never had the knack of inhabiting a space like the angel does. There are two chests now against the wall, two bookcases at different heights, to accommodate the sloping ceiling, and at least three footstools.

A table under the window is it’s own tidy mess of glassware and writing implements – inkstone and inkwell, brushes and weights and quills and pens all upright in a rather bobbly glass vase, and a pottery plate with some nuts piled up in it, which Aziraphale fetches before he sits himself down, cracking one open and offering it to Crowley.

He takes it, but refuses another, as usual. Aziraphale suspects Crowley simply likes to be offered food, even though he doesn’t really enjoy or need it. He does like the drink though. Terrible wine really, but palatable with enough spice and sugar.

‘So is this a social visit?’

‘Just catching up. I was in town. Going up to somewhere called Langley tomorrow.’

‘Anything I need to thwart?’

‘Shouldn’t think so. Minor inconveniences.’ He doesn’t say if it’s hell’s bidding or his own initiative, but from the description Aziraphale suspects the latter. Crowley is an agent of chaos, a warm spark against the dull gloom of hell, the cold sterility of heaven. More wicked than evil, although Aziraphale tries not to think it (because of course it’s a given that all demons are evil, and are suffering their deserved punishment), playing what Aziraphale thinks of, fond despite himself, as pranks.

But after Crowley is gone, and not for the first time, Aziraphale takes himself to task. It is self-indulgent to like a demon, to succumb to charm. It is self-indulgent to make excuses for one.

Foolish too. Aziraphale knows (or thinks he knows) that snakes can hypnotise their prey [1], and demons tempt on purpose. Obviously. And Crowley is the original tempter. The first and most successful. It stands to reason he would be especially.. charming, enticing, even disarming if he chose to try. And although Aziraphale hasn’t seen any evidence of his so choosing [2] that doesn’t prove it isn’t there. 

Of course (he argues against himself) it doesn’t mean it _is_ there either. In fact the specificities of Aziraphale's fantasies - the craving to press his lips to all the places Crowley’s skin is thin, his knee and neck and collarbone and the temple where his pulse beats, the inner fold of his elbow where the veins are visible, and the urge to bury his fingers in Crowley’s hair and coax him to rest against Aziraphale’s thigh, to soothe and murmur until Crowley’s eyes close in sleep, do not feel as though they could have been planted by someone else.

This terrible aching tenderness is, Aziraphale is sure, his own way of wanting. His problem and his alone.

So even if he were to… Well Crowley probably wouldn’t want. Can’t possibly know or want… Would probably just mock in fact. And that’s a good thing, obviously. It means it’s much less likely that Aziraphale will ever be tempted.

more tempted.

oh _hell._

[1] He still has the treatise on the shelf next to his Aristotle. Nice illustrations, but not otherwise brilliant. 

[2] Except that one conversation some centuries ago in which Crowley suggested the angel might be missing out, and which even Aziraphale is experienced enough to know was not an attempt at seduction.


	3. Chapter 3

‘I got peckish.’

Oh you little liar, Crowley thinks. Silk shod and prettied up with lace and curls and deceit and bastardry. Don’t pretend you don’t spend an hour every morning in one of London’s many chocolate houses, hearing all the gossip and reading all the news sheets. There’s no way on this Earth or any other that you_ walked into the_ _reign of terror_ by accident. 

Looking like a peach as well (Biteable, lickable, bruisable, Crowley thinks, and recoils sharply from the thought).

He doesn’t want thanks, but lunch gives the demon a chance to ask what the angel is really up to. 

‘Perhaps I just wanted to see you.’

‘Really?’ Colour Crowley unconvinced. 

‘Well, perhaps.’ Somewhere in the decades since they last met the angel has learnt to be pert. Even flirtatious, in the manner of the royal courts. It’s disconcerting, not least because he’s actually rather good at it. All sleek knowing smiles and eyes that gaze a little too long, then flicker over Crowley as if he sees something that interests him. Guileless and naughty by turns.

It’s unnatural. Affected. Not the angel’s style at all. But empty wit and meaningless flirtation are the order of the day, and Crowley doesn’t mind the attention, doesn’t mind being distracted, since that’s what the angel clearly wants. Lets the conversation meander while Aziraphale savours his food in small sips and neat bites.

Spoil me, he seems to be saying, even though he’s left the silks behind, and if Crowley were buying he’d probably order a dessert he doesn’t even want just to have an excuse to let Aziraphale eat it.

As it is it’s the angel pouring out wine with a generous hand - ‘It’s a thank you, remember’ - and gradually slipping back into something like his natural manner by the end of the meal. Enthusing about Diderot and Equiano and Ann Radcliffe, and fretting only a little over the Spanish court he’s recently come from and how the king just doesn’t seem _interested_ and they could be having a revolution there next if they’re not careful (and while that always sounds such a lovely idea it always seems to end in tears).

The angel and the demon finish their lovely lunch with just a sip of two of cognac before sundown, and go their separate ways.

And really, Aziraphale thinks, it's all been quite delightful. A lovely meal in excellent company, as ever.

It’s just not quite what he was hoping for when he’d planned it, and getting all dressed up to dally with Crowley over the table linen does seem rather silly now it's done.

But he had wanted to try. Not because he'd really believed Crowley felt the same way at all. That would be ridiculous. Just in order to check it wasn’t some sort of temptation. Or at least, not one of that kind. The carnal kind.

It seems it’s not. Which, he tells himself, is excellent news. Crowley is not interested in Aziraphale in that fashion and that is a good thing. Obviously. Because their respective sides would never tolerate it. 

Which doesn’t stop Aziraphale feeling rather.. dejected. Unfortunately.

Because he _had_ thought. He _had_ hoped. Crowley had done so many nice little things for him since the arrangement had begun, and even the odd grand gesture. Doesn't it normally mean something when people do nice things they don’t have to? Ever since he's acknowledged his own romantic impulses Aziraphale has been watching how the humans do it, and that's always been one of their things. At least, you know, when they're doing it properly.

But he and Crowley aren't human, are they? 

‘Silly angel.’ Aziraphale tells his reflection, but he can’t get his usual tone of affectionate teasing quite right. To be honest he feels he looks rather ridiculous, all primped up. 

More ridiculous still when his lip wobbles and he turns away to drop down into one of the chairs.

Oh, _why_ ever did he do it? He’s such in idiot.

But he’d had to know. He’d simply had to. It had been nagging and nagging at him, every time they’d seen each other. At least _that_ should stop now. And at least Crowley hadn’t mocked. That would have been unbearable.

Maybe he hadn’t even noticed. Why should he? An angel flirting - the very idea is ludicrous. Monstrous. 

Tears well up, unbidden. A momentary weakness, Aziraphale tells himself. It means nothing. So he was vain, and foolish and weak and played the damsel in distress for a day. It doesn’t matter. 

He’ll have his little weep over it and then they’ll just.. go back to normal. It’s fine. Everything, Aziraphale tells himself firmly, is absolutely fine in this finest of all possible worlds.

At least there are always books.

A nice safe scholarly existence. That’s the ticket.


	4. Chapter 4

‘Satan’s sake, this is awful.’ Crowley breathes.

‘Have you been out to Rome?’ Aziraphale murmurs. ‘I did a blessing there, a child whose parents are gone.’ he sighs. ‘And there’s worse than the bombing..’

‘I can feel it.’ Crowley says quietly. ‘I can smell it, all the way from here. And anyway downstairs are thrilled, can’t shut up about it.’ He glowers at an open door with a gleam of lamplight showing through and shouts, automatically. ‘Put that light out.’

‘Sorry mate.’ and the door closes, quick.

‘Surely downstairs don’t think..’

‘Of course they do.’ Crowley takes a drag from his cigarette, a small flare of red in the darkness. ‘They’re thrilled to bits. I nearly thumped Hastur with a wet sandbag when he came crawling up from the river to congratulate me.’ Crowley takes another breath of smoke and lets it stream out slowly. ‘I mean, I get that we’re demons but do they have to _enjoy_ it so much?’

‘My side won’t do anything.’ Aziraphale says sadly. ‘They say it’s not their problem. Maybe I should have pretended it _was_ demons who kicked the whole thing off. That way they might have taken an interest.’

‘Nah. Did they ever? They don’t really care about.’ Crowley waves a hand to indicate the pile of rubble opposite that it should be too dark for their human eyes to see, and by extension every awful thing out in the wider world. ‘All this.’

‘Do you think - in the beginning, if I hadn’t given them my sword, any of this would have happened?’ and Crowley knows Aziraphale is voicing something that has been troubling him for a long, long time. Something he’s only just dared ask.

‘I think they would have been et, angel, and none of this would be here.’ It’s the truth.

Aziraphale sighs again and sips his tea. He’s conjured it sweet with magic – it doesn’t taste the same but he doesn’t quite like to waste his sugar ration on himself when there are people who _need_ the energy.

They fall into silence. This isn’t Crowley’s patch, not anymore, but he remembers it bustling. The war has tamed it, sent the excitement into the clubs and off the streets. The demon himself is in the East End these days, officially running a black market racket and, unbeknownst to hell, also working as a fire warden.

The strangest thing is that you can see the constellations again now. They’re still up there, the lights that Crowley painted across the sky.

He wonders - will he and the angel still be here when they go out? Still standing just the length of a forearm distant?

Or will they have had their own war by then?

_Take my hand_, he thinks, _and run with me. We didn’t choose these sides._

Other times he looks up and the stars aren’t there. Instead he can only see searchlights sweeping across the sky, can only hear the dull throb of aeroplane engines, and he thinks of Da Vinci’s sun-drenched workroom in Milan, all levers and pulleys and tanks with runnels of water between them. Of the sweet smell of turpentine and poisonous reek of linseed. Of a hundred projects one short human life would never give time to come to fruition.

Thinks of Leonardo and wishes he were back there, opening the wine the apprentices had brought from the market: _vino, pane, olio, burro_ scribbled hastily on the corner of a notebook, paper folded and folded and then cut to make smaller sheets of which every part could be used.

The artist had drunk wine from a small beaker, water from a large goblet, nothing like a demon can drink. He had sat talking with Crowley though, until past nightfall, calling him Antonius, Antonio, mio amico, and persuaded him to slip from his clothes so that Da Vinci could sketch the muscles of his leg, the cant of his hips and fall of his hair. Even the arch of his wings, feather by feather, fascinated, trailing his fingers along the scapula, the carpal joint, pressing against them so gently.

‘Will it hurt if I..’ He had wanted to see how they folded, how they stretched, the mechanics of things, had lit candles and drunk into the night to see the gleam of light over gloss black feathers, the dilation and slow blink of Crowley’s eyes.

‘Will it hurt if I..’ as he reached to bring the lamp closer, to watch Crowley’s eyes change again.

And Crowley had not said yes, it will hurt. Not now, but later, because I cannot understand how you can seem so solid and yet be so ephemeral. The strength of your arms, the warmth of a bearded kiss on my cheek, the smoothness of chalk on paper, shading the shape of a face, a skull, a heart. Rapid squiggles of words written backwards with the wrong hand, sinistrorso.

Shouldn’t these things be solid? Will even the stars go out? 

And now there’s this war, and the wasting of cities, and the worse things that Crowley really can smell, as all demons can smell carnage and terror, blowing down to them from across the sea.

‘I’ll probably be given a commendation.’ He says darkly.

He’d dropped the last in the Guadalhorce. This one will go to the bottom of the Thames.


End file.
